The 2015 Speech Industry Implementation Awards: Afni

At Afni, a provider of business process outsourcing services for the telecommunications industry, every customer interaction and every word spoken or typed is data that can be analyzed and used to improve agent performance and identify the drivers of sales attainment. To help harness the power of all of that available data, Afni in July 2014 brought in CallMiner's Eureka interaction analytics product.

CallMiner Eureka takes about 40 percent of the nearly 1.2 million calls that Afni receives each month on behalf of its clients and delivers a full picture of what was said and the context in which it was said. This has been a tremendous asset for Afni, which is based in Bloomington, Ill.

"CallMiner Eureka helps us to get more information much faster," says Seth Anglin, director of business intelligence and reporting analytics/contact center solutions at Afni, which handles inbound customer service, sales, Web chat, and social media monitoring for its clients.

"We now get a better understanding of what is going on with our business and our clients' businesses and the reasons for the calls that are coming in," Anglin says.

Afni currently uses CallMiner Eureka to monitor the quality and performance of the 2,500 agents it employs in the United States and the Philippines. The company looks at call types to identify opportunities for supplemental training and coaching, as well as to increase the effectiveness of new-hire training.

Whereas a coach might typically listen to two or three calls and make assumptions, CallMiner gives a more accurate representation of what is going on. Given this picture, coaches can then identify behaviors that affect multiple metrics and work with agents to fix them. Additionally, coaches can isolate specific examples for agents, helping with buy-in at the agent level. This has reduced coach prep time by more than 20 percent for most interactions. Additional time spent interacting with customers contributed to 3 percent less attrition last year.

CallMiner has made Afni more effective at coaching its agents and identified opportunities for targeted training. Performance improvement gained from this system has contributed to the 800-seat growth Afni saw last year. At the same time, it was able to increase the head count at its Philippines center by 100 people last year and expanded its work-at-home operations to 170 seats.

Afni also uses CallMiner Eureka to increase sales by measuring drivers of close rates. Additionally, call type analysis is helping to improve call sequencing and fix the causes of repeat calls. It produces actionable data that Anglin and other managers can use to make recommendations regarding call scripting, call sequencing, and other process improvements.

Since implementing CallMiner Eureka, Afni's sales teams have exceeded goals by 55.4 percent and seen first-call resolution increase by 2.8 percent. The ability to manage call sequencing behaviors has led to an 8.7 percent improvement in discover process statements and a 17 percent improvement in positioning language, correlating with a 4 percent increase in overall rep performance. Among lower-performing agents, this metric improved 6.4 percent.

Afni has also been able to cut the amount of time spent on repetitive quality assurance processes every week by 63 percent, and the time it takes to identify calls related to specific products, promotions, or campaigns by 50 percent.

Prior to implementing the CallMiner solution, Afni wasn't doing much at all to track and score calls. Some front-line supervisors were doing some things on their own, but it was far from scientific. "Initially, we didn't know what we didn't know," Anglin recalls.

Beyond boosting its own business, Afni brought in the CallMiner solution in response to clients who wanted more data about their customers, Anglin says. Afni can, for example, give its clients specific feedback from customers about issues that affect them, to help get ahead of negative customer impacts.

While Afni might eventually expand its use of the solution, Anglin is satisfied with where his company is currently. "We're getting a pretty good baseline with where we are at now," he says.

THE RESULTS

Since deploying CallMiner Eureka in its U.S. and Philippines call center operations, Afni has seen:

a 20 percent reduction in coach prep time;

sales reps exceed goals by 55.4 percent;

a 2.8 percent increase in first-call resolution;

a 4 percent increase in agent performance;

a 63 percent reduction in the amount of time spent on quality assurance; and

a 50 percent reduction in the amount of time spent identifying calls related to specific products, promotions, or campaigns.